The monument stands high on
the north wall of the sanctuary of the
church, above Shakespeare’s gravestone which
is set in the floor beneath. It comprises a
half-length effigy in an arch which is set
within an architectural frame with Composite
columns of polished black marble. Above is
an attic storey bearing the coat of arms of
the deceased which are carved in low relief.
The armorial panel is flanked by two seated
figures of naked boys, one with a spade and
the other a doused torch and a skull,
symbolising work in life and rest in death.
A second, larger skull surmounts the coat of
arms while below the effigy is a panel on
which the inscription is incised in gilt
letters. It reads as follows:

IUDICIO
PYLIUM
GENIO SOCRATEM
ARTE MARONEM

TERRA
TEGET, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS
HABET

[A
NESTOR IN JUDGEMENT, A SOCRATES IN SPIRIT, A
VIRGIL IN ART

THE
EARTH COVERS HIM, THE PEOPLE MOURN HIM,
MOUNTOLYMPUS CLAIMS HIM]

STAY
PASSENGER,
WHY GOEST THOU BY SO FAST,

READ IF THOU CANST,
WHOM ENVIOUS
DEATH HATH PLAST

WITH IN THIS MONUMENT
SHAKESPEARE:
WITH WHOME

QUICK NATURE DIDE WHOSE
NAME DOTH DECK
YS
TOMBE

FAR
MORE THAN COST: SIEH ALL YTHE
HATH WRITT

LEAVES
LIVING ART, BUT PAGE,
TO SERVE HIS WITT.

OBIIT AŇO DOI1616

AETATIS 53 DIE 23 AP.

Shakespeare is shown
bareheaded, dressed in a doublet, collar and cuffs. Over
the doublet he wears a gown. In front of him is a
cushion with gilt tassels on which he rests his hands.
In his right hand he holds a quill pen which is a real
quill that has to be replaced from time to time; in his
left hand he has a blank sheet of paper.

The monument is of the ‘preacher’ or ‘scholar’
type with a truncated effigy and ornamental surround.
Late medieval in origin, it became popular in
Oxford
around the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and then spread elsewhere. Shakespeare was
neither a preacher nor a scholar. Ben Jonson chided him
for having ‘small Latine and lesse Greeke’ – the one an
essential and the other a desirable qualification for
the role at the time – and he was probably not entitled
to wear the gown in which he is portrayed. He sports it
as a mark of social status, to which his coat of arms
also makes claim.
The sculpture has all the hallmarks of the ‘SouthwarkSchool’ of foreign craftsmen who settled
south of the river Thames
during the sixteenth century to avoid a ban on immigrant
labour which was imposed by the City of London livery companies.
They developed a distinctive style which was adapted
from work in the Netherlands from which they came, using
a colourful combination of materials, particularly
alabaster and black marble, enhanced with a great deal
of paint and gilding and a bastardised
style of classical architecture for the surrounds. The
herald and antiquary Sir William Dugdale noted in his
diary for 1653 that this memorial and that of John Combe
nearby were the work of ‘one Gerard Johnson’. Dugdale is
not an entirely reliable source in such matters but his
testimony must bear some weight and it points to Gerard
Johnson the Younger, a second-generation member of one
of the leading Southwark workshops.

The inscription does not cohere
with the monument itself. It is a scrappy assemblage of
words, crudely cut, the lettering being far below the
standard of most Southwark work. Remarkable by its
absence is any of the genealogy and biography in which
Elizabethans and Jacobeans delighted. All we have by way
of personal detail is Shakespeare’s date of death and
his age which are inserted at the bottom in smaller
lettering. The rest is an epitaph, in two lines of Latin
and six of English, of the type which several poets
contributed to the
First Folio of his works, published in 1623. One of
the poets in question was Jonson and the epitaph has
been attributed to him. It rehearses a familiar theme of
the period, derived from Horace, that a person’s life
and work are his true monument ; the theme recurs, in
much more lucid form, in his
FirstFolio epitaph.
The whole text
shows every sign of having been added after the monument
was erected. This strongly suggests that Shakespeare set
up the monument to himself, following a common and well
accepted practice of the time, leaving others to glorify
him in verse and to specify when he died. If so, the
effigy acquires a new interest and significance. In the
twentieth century it did not get a good press. The
famous Shakespearian scholar John Dover Wilson said it
made the Bard look like a ‘self-satisfied pork butcher’.
It has been repainted more than once and if the later
paint layers were removed some detail might be revealed
which would improve the likeness.